Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Reviving Windows XP Mode and Recovering My Two Years Lost Address List

When I upgraded computers several years ago from Windows XP to Windows 7, I found to my horror that a number of my computer programs would no longer run on the Windows 7 upgrade.  Fortunately the nice people at Alice Computer in San Marino told me that if I upgraded to the professional version of Windows 7 for something under $100, part of the package was a Windows XP emulator mode, which made me a happy camper.

But then a couple of years ago things started to fall apart.  I was still using a DOS based address list, and one day it became inoperable.  Then a year ago all of the icons on my Windows XP virtual computer screen went similarly inoperable, only making a clanging sound when I clicked on the icon. Given that the Windows XP virtual mode itself wasn't widely well known, attempts to look for a fix were fruitless.  But my XP mode start menu was still operating, so running programs off of that was a satisfactory workaround.

But then the other shoe dropped the other day, when I tried running the Windows XP virtual computer, and while it launched, everything was dead as a doornail.  I decided to take one last search on the internet, and found a discussion which seemed to say that a single file deletion could get Windows XP up and running again.  Breathlessly I looked for the file as directed and found it and deleted it.  Then running the Windows XP virtual machine, while having to clear a dialog box which indicated not everything was perfect, it ran beautifully--my Key Mailer DOS program was running again as was my Microsoft Access.  So if it happens again, here is the magic file:  Windows XP Mode.vsv in the folder C:\users\...\appdata\local\microsoft\Windows Virtual PC\Virtual Machines.  (This also works for the failure to integrate message.)

2 comments:

  1. Please, this will happen again and you'll have no recourse. Now is the time to get with the times. Move away from XP already.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Please, this will happen again and you'll have no recourse. Now is the time to get with the times. Move away from XP already.

    ReplyDelete